Member-only story
Leonardo’s Democratic Helicopter
Why inadequate design can never produce good results
A few people are aware, thanks mainly to a pulp airport novel and a subsequent movie, that the name Leonardo is associated not only with a photogenic Hollywood celebrity but also with an inventor and artist who lived many years ago and whose accomplishments outshine the aforementioned ephemeral celebrity by many orders of magnitude.
Leonardo da Vinci was born in April 1452 CE and thanks to the vagaries of historical chance as well as to his own accomplishments we now regard him as one of the greatest polymaths of all time.
He was certainly an accomplished artist and like many other inquisitive individuals of his time who possessed sufficient wealth for thoughtful leisure he exhibited a deep interest in the physical world. Although he was born “out of wedlock” as the quaint phrase puts it, his father arranged for him to be educated in the studio of the famous painter Andrea del Verrocchio. This enabled Leonardo to develop the artistic skills that, once he was established in his own studio courtesy of his father’s money, enabled him to earn a living producing paintings for the aristocrats of the day.
Leonardo had a prodigious imagination which he applied across a wide range of subjects including anatomy, civil and mechanical…
